Day 21: Trust

I realized today that a lot of this journey revolves around trust. I had a moment at PT today when I really wanted to throw a bit of a tantrum as I still have to wear the harness on the treadmill. I ask at every PT appointment if I can walk without the harness and I know it’s becoming an annoyance to them. But as soon as I can walk without the harness I can start walking more outside of the PT office. As I was discussing this with my Greg, my physical therapist, I realized that I had to trust his professional opinion that I am not ready yet. We are not sure whether it’s because I have been doing a bit more training this week or if it’s because I haven’t walked much being homebound for the snow days, but the hitch in my step that was going away has come back. So I will give Greg a break tomorrow and wait until next week to ask again–he said we could reevaluate then.

There was a girl at PT today that I remember from a while back. The last time I saw her was very early on in her treatment following her knee surgery. I remember her first day of PT when she couldn’t lift her leg on her own; she was very frustrated. I told her on that first day that it would get better, in fact I promised her it would get better and faster then she thought it would. When we chatted today, she told me that she remembered what I had told her and how she didn’t believe me then but has now come to understand it. I thought I was helping her by telling her that having come from a very similar spot just weeks before, but she didn’t know me and had no reason to trust what I was saying was the truth.

Trusting someone else can be very difficult. It means having to let go and take a risk, it means you don’t have all the answers, it means that you might get hurt. With our natural instincts to protect ourselves, trust can be quite the contrary. It forces us to be vulnerable and put our fate in the hands of someone else. Part of me cringes at these things, while at the same time longing for it. Life would be pretty awful if we decided not to trust anyone and instead walked around being paranoid all time time living in fear of everything. In all honesty, if that’s how we lived I would still be walking around with a tumor in my leg.

So what now? I am going to try and remember that I have chosen to surround myself with good, well educated people who know their stuff including the doctors, surgeons and physical therapy staff on Team Koko. I am going to admit that I don’t know everything. I will be okay even if things don’t go my way. I might mess up along the way and moreover get hurt, but I will learn from my mistakes and not let them get in the way of me trusting again.

PS-I entered a contest for a free Ironman race entry from TrainingPeaks.com (a great online training log that I have actually been using for the last several years of triathlon training) and I need your help to win. Please vote for me by clicking the following link and following the directions: http://bit.ly/1flSLJY. It’s a photo contest about what motivates you…if you need to be caught up on what motivates me, just click back to the blog from a couple days ago called 8 months to Ironman Chattanooga. The photo I submitted is below.